If Barack Obama succeeds, his joint address to Congress will be seen as historic — indeed as the foundational document of Obamaism.

We don’t, of course, recollect Krauthammer ever speaking of Eisenhowerism or Nixonism or Bushism. To be fair, Reaganism falls from his keyboard with an easy regularity and the suffix makes some sense in that respect, given the distinct ideological shifts that the one president facilitated and that the contemporary president looks capable of. Still, one assumes that Charles wouldn’t be comfortable with comparison between Reagan and the dark beasts of the right, Goebbels, say, or those happy profiteers who locked their workers inside the Triangle Shirtwaist Building.

Yet at the same time, the rest of his column is really rather thoughtful and not overly prejudicial, for Charles. Sure, he tosses in the ideologically-necessary description of European economies as “schlerotic” and as examples of nanny-statism but “evil”, “Satan”, “Hitler” and “destruction of everything American and beautiful in the universe” make no appearance here.